The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play

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The most tragic form of procrastination is putting off living. It prevents us from completing really important tasks in our lives and lessens respect for ourselves. It’s like I mentioned earlier, peak performers oftentimes surpass workaholics and procrastinators in taking more vacations, being healthier, taking more time off, while accomplishing more of the tasks that really matter. The author writes in a gentle motivating voice. He's dead on with the reasons why we procrastinate at certain times in our lives or in certain areas. It's the understanding of those reasons and the useful tools that he provides that helps you to overcome and work toward goals left undone. That's what makes this book so useful. Not too many self-development books provide such easy to use techniques to help you improve in an area of your life, this one does.

The Now Habit by Neil Fiore [Actionable Summary] The Now Habit by Neil Fiore [Actionable Summary]

Prior to reading this book, I didn't view procrastination as one of my major challenges- but much of this book resonated with me and I will take it as an opportunity for personal improvement. I have to..." No, you can choose to do it or choose the consequences of not doing it. Same with "I should..." Forget that--make a decision, do it, or don't do it. Full Book Name: The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play The truth is, no one is an absolute procrastinator. There are always activities that we willingly dive into with enthusiasm. Choose self-compassion over self-criticism. Beating yourself up after every failure is a great way to create more fear in your life – fear of your own self-judgment and mental beatings. (Learn how to use self-compassion against procrastination here.)Get our full summary and infographic for more tips and examples! Other Tools for Overcoming Procrastination As technology advances, this reward is becoming even more appealing. Nowadays you don’t simply avoid the hard task, you substitute it with something that gives you immediate pleasure: social media, video games, watching funny memes and pics online, YouTube, etc. Habits are learned when an activity is instantly followed by a reward. Procrastination is rewarding because it provides temporary relief from our stress and anxiety. In particular, we use procrastination to achieve 3 things:

The now habit: a strategic program for overcoming (PDF)

A further benefit of this guideline is that working for 30 minutes is usually enough to get fully involved and interested in your work. Once you’re in it for this amount of time, you start enjoying the task, start making some progress, resulting in pleasure, pride, confidence, and other positive feelings associated with work, thus keeping you motivated and happy. Often a simple thing like procrastination can hurt our life really badly. That’s why it’s so major to rid yourself from this habit and ignite motivation in your life. What this does is it basically forces you to do deep work – the kind of work that has been shown to maximize work productivity. If you’re new to the term, here’s how productivity expert Cal Newport explains it in his book, also titled Deep Work: “ Deep Work: Professional activities performed in a state of distraction-free concentration that push your cognitive capabilities to their limit. These efforts create new value, improve your skill, and are hard to replicate. Deep work is necessary to wring every last drop of value out of your current intellectual capacity. We now know from decades of research in both psychology and neuroscience that the state of mental strain that accompanies deep work is also necessary to improve your abilities.” In fact, you never even schedule any work. It only goes on the schedule only after you’ve spent at least 30 minutes of quality, focused time working. And when does it happen? In-between your fixed commitments, self-care activities, and play.You feel frozen with anxiety because your natural threat assessment system produces adrenaline to deal with threats to you Procrastinators prioritize work over play and think they only deserve play once they’ve become more disciplined, more successful, etc. This results in a life devoid of fun, pleasure, play, and leisure. ” Once you’ve unscheduled your calendar, you’re in for a surprise. There’s not nearly as much time for working on your projects as you may have thought. This realization alone can be hugely helpful. Most procrastinators among us feel like we have 24 hours in a day to get work done. Then, at the end of the day, we wonder where all of our time went and we feel guilty for not getting enough done.

The Now Habit - Penguin Books UK

Fill your Unschedule with work on projects only if you have done 30 minutes of uninterrupted work. Use the 30 minutes deadline to motivate yourself and to work more efficiently One of the most practical books in the Psychology of Procrastination that I have read. The cliched advice 'Just do it' is not a sustainable adage for procrastinators to live by. Procrastination is not the problem, it is a symptom a deeper underlying issue regarding fear of failure, fear of rejection, fear of success or generally feeling overwhelmed by grand plans and pressure. This book uses a combination of great tools like reverse psychology, introducing guilt-free play into one's schedule, meditation to stay centred and growing each day by cultivating the psychology of love rather than fear. And not like what Neil suggested? Which is to fill in on my progress after I’ve completed 30 mins of work? Situation B. Now imagine that the task is just the same, to walk a board thirty feet long and one foot wide, and you have the same abilities; only now the board is suspended between two buildings 100 feet above the pavement. Look across to the other end of the board and contemplate beginning your assignment. Take a break or reward yourself after each 30 minutes of quality work. This will create positive associations with your work instead of negative onesIf work isn’t fun and only being the best at work is worth something then that’s the perfect setup for procrastination. No one canever possibly fulfill their own expectations andno one wants to get started in the first place. Lesson 2:Try to unschedule your life and build your work around your fun, not the other way around. Avoid the fear of failure or disappointment, which often comes from perfectionism and self-criticism.

The Now Habit” by Neil Fiore (Book Summary) - NJlifehacks “The Now Habit” by Neil Fiore (Book Summary) - NJlifehacks

Use a positive self-statement. Neil Fiore recommends something like, “Whatever happens I will survive. I will find a way to carry on. I will not let this be the end of the world for me. I will find a way to lessen the pain in my life and maximize the joy.” This forces you to really commit to working efficiently. It’s like entering a race. 5-4-3-2-1-GO! Once you punched in, you give it all you’ve got. You’re excited about how much you’ll be able to accomplish in the next thirty minutes. One thing this book does not do is provide heavy examples with fairy tale endings that I find in many self-development books. I think many of those fairy tale endings are misdirecting and can contribute to a sense of failure. I don't really read self-help books. I simply don't find myself interesting enough to spend hours on introspection.

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According to Fiore, worrying is a good thing because it warns us of potential threats. It only becomes problematic because we fail to do the real work of worrying. Making sure you spend more time engaging in guilt-free play creates another interesting side effect – it changes how you see work. Right now, your thinking probably goes something like this, “First comes work, then I can do something fun.” Sounds good, but the problem is that for procrastinators, the ‘something fun’ part never actually comes. Procrastinators don’t know where their time goes, feel guilty for thinking they wasted time, feel that they don’t deserve any rest, and thus never really allow themselves any guilt-free leisure time. Being unrealistic about time. For example, saying that I will start the project sometime next week instead of being specific